Holmesian Logic Part 2
by The Cat's Whiskers
Summary: John Watson: the sidebar nobody was interested in, doggedly still sweeping up the shattered shards of Sherlock Holmes' life on his own, supporting and supported only by Mrs Hudson…until… (This is Part 2 of the story and is set after the events of the Season 2 finale, following Sherlock Holmes' apparent 'death' and before the start of Season 3, and is mostly John's POV)
1. Chapter 1

_**Disclaimer:**__ This story is "fan-fiction", based on the Television programme: "Sherlock", 2010 onwards contemporary TV series 'reimagining' which remains the intellectual property of creators/producers Steve Moffatt, Mark Gatiss, Steve Thompson, BBC1 et al. _

_It is not owned by "The Cat's Whiskers"; no money is being made, and it is purely for the enjoyment of fans of the show, etc., etc. Legal counsel has advised that "fan-fiction" falls within the bounds of "fair use" as defined by UK law (1740) and US law (1976). _

_All 'Original characters, plots and story-settings remain the intellectual property of 'The Cat's Whiskers' and may not be reproduced or continued or expanded without her express permission to reproduce, continue or expand same. The Cat's Whiskers may be contacted at any time via Private Messaging for this purpose to request same. _

_All excerpts of and reference to on-screen dialogue and aired episodes (including deleted scenes, episode commentaries, gag reels, additional (a.k.a. 'bonus') content) and on-screen named characters remain the property of the screenwriter(s). _

_**Notice: **__You are expressly and explicitly permitted and encouraged to save this story to your __**personal **__computer and/or other such device for your __**personal **__reading pleasure (only) if you so wish. Some years ago I suffered a serious loss of much of my works due to a computer software malware issue, and I managed to get 60 percent of it back thanks to other writers and readers who had saved my stories on their computers or knew about "web caching" and the Wayback Machine™ website archive service. Since I err on the side of paranoia, if I one day need to go through that process again [aaagh!] for any reason, you may be the reader who is able to help because you have the story saved on your hard drive/memory stick/iPad etc. Please do not, however, circulate the stories without asking me first. I can be contacted in all instances via Private Messaging Service. _

**_Summary:_** _John Watson: the sidebar nobody was interested in, doggedly still sweeping up the shattered shards of Sherlock Holmes' life on his own, supporting and supported only by Mrs Hudson…until… _

_**Rating - important:**_ _for Fan Fiction Dot Net site purposes only: K+ to M for references to suicide, psychopathy, sociopathy, BSDM, general family dysfunction and sundry unpleasantness. Why? See Author's Note after __**Chapter 1**__. _

**_Setting: T_**_his is the second of a two part story: Part 1, which you do need to have read first for this to make more sense, was set general mid-late Season 2 and is told from John's POV. This Part 2 is a few months set after the famous Season 2 finale, before the premiere of Season (when it will probably become AU) and again is mostly from John's POV. _

**_Story content note: _**_See Author's Note after _**_Chapter 1_**_. _

**_Credit/shout-out/blame-placement_: **_This story has been posted to for 'The Hobbet' who asked if I'd written any Sherlock fan-fiction…Yes, in a word. _

**Holmesian Logic**

**Part 2**

**Chapter 1**

Hmmm…

Just like the first one, the second collapsible storage/transfer cardboard box wasn't as big as his memory had thought it was…Although maybe in the past he had just crammed stuff into it like it was a form of TARDIS and only sheer luck had saved him from having the bottom fall out of it whilst he was carrying it –

_Oh and isn't that a statement to conjure with_…No doubt his therapist, she would have claimed that unconsciously he'd_ known_ that - had he continued his visits to her, that was, following that single revisit he'd made, but his perception at that session was too coloured, after Sherlock had…

'…_Fire your therapist – she thinks your leg injury is psychosomatic – which it is, by the way – but she thinks the cause is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Afghanistan. You're not traumatised, you miss it…'_

Words from the first verbal exchange – 'conversation' would be too grandiloquent a description – at Bart's…if he'd known _then_ what he knew _now_ about what he was getting himself into…He'd have shot James Moriarty on sight when he slithered into the lab pretending to be Molly Hooper's in-the-closet 'boyfriend'…

Box on the big old table they had used as a work desk/dumping ground…But this was going to require a re-think…Sherlock's pulp fiction collection alone took up enough room to wallpaper a room…especially since about a month before…before Then, Sherlock had gotten onto _Westerns_ somehow – of course Mr OCD immediately and relentlessly started haunting second hand book shops and market stalls, adding novellas to his already vast collection of potboilers, Aga sagas, old time crime and Mills & Boon 183-pagers. There was still the entire _Sheriff of Rockabye County _series by J.T. Edson on Sherlock's bedside cabinet waiting for him to…waiting forever…

Unless he went out and bought another hundred weight of storage boxes…or else made some ruthless room clearance choices…That idiotic black 'steer' head on the wall with the headphones trailing from it seemed to look back at him with a sarcastic _'Nooooo? Mate, yer reckon?'_ expression…But then, it, like the books and ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the bumph in the flat was Sherlock's rammel, like two of his 'taste' in silk dressing gowns, the sapphire and the blue/white pinstripe, still strewn over the back of the sofa – _he _could have packed his stuff in both the two smaller-than-realised cardboard boxes without issue, because other than clothes there was only his Browning…

Which wasn't on the table top where he'd put it a minute ago…had he?

No, he _hadn't _taken it upstairs with him. He had put it right _there_ on top of the Complete _Professor Challenger_ _Stories_ Omnibus and George McCoy's _Guide to the Working Ladies of London_, so where the…

He heard no sound; he _felt_ the change in air pressure, looking around

And he saw dead people…

…_continued in Chapter 2…_

© 2013, The Cat's Whiskers

All rights reserved

Author's Note:

**Rating Note:** This story has a "rating" only for Fan Fiction Dot Net site purposes only. It is has no "rating" otherwise.

Why? I do not believe that written works should be age-rated; it is a foolish and cruel form of censorship that discourages and de-incentivises reading at all, for both knowledge and pleasure which is disastrous for the hope of producing the next generation of Keats, Milton, Twain, Shakespeare, Christie, Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, Cavendish, Blyton, C.S. Lewis, Joss Whedon, John Sullivan, Ian la Frenais & Dick Clement, James Perry & David Croft, Roy Clarke, Ronnie Barker & Ronnie Corbett, Eric Kripke, Jaime Paglia, Kyle Killen, and so on. Children know when they are being patronised, condescended to and cotton-wool bubble-wrapped from how the World Really Works and nothing is more guaranteed to stop them reading for pleasure and for knowledge as fast as that.

The above rating is listed so it conforms to ' ' requirements to rate all stories. This story contains mildly intemperate language entirely in context by very stressed people and sundry mild references to violence, drugs and rock 'n' roll, all of which can be seen and heard on daytime soaps (how's that for pre-watershed) by anyone from toddler age upwards.

Unfortunately Western social culture today after forty years of the liberal bigotry of Political Correctness is a pornographic and paedophilic society where promiscuity and selfishness are glorified as "good" and self-control, self-respect and personal responsibility are vilified, and as a result most of this stuff is now pre-watershed TV or actually watchable for free as live-action porn anywhere you spot any group of 12-25 year olds at about 11:00pm on a weekend.

The content in here is very tame compared to sexting, hook-ups, misogynistic and misandrist supposed 'erotica' reading and the casual daily porn viewing most third graders and older are now accessing from their smartphones in the school lunch break in between mainlining heroin as an expression of their 'right to self-expression' and dealing smack to the Babies and Toddlers group, because hey, if mum and dad are happy to dose them up with Ritalin to keep them quiet, quiescent and out of the way whilst they focus on their career, retail therapy, golf weekend or whatever's really important, what's wrong with big sis or bro getting in on some of that pocket money supplementing action?

I kid you not – according to police research data by 2013 one of the world's most successful 'new' online dot-com businesses (founded 2011) was "Silk Road" which sells illegal drugs by mail order direct from the manufacturers to any customer who can pay, cutting out the 'middle-man' drug traffickers/gangs/lords. They saw 200 percentage growth in the first 18 months of business, which is beyond satire.

**Story Content Note: **As with all my fan-fiction, I have tried to keep this story as accurate as to "canon" as possible. I have no option but to avoid the whole "pot-kettle-black" thing because I teach Creative Writing and wrote a textbook; Writing Fan-Fiction for New Writers (Is it 'Real Writing' and is it Useful?) © The Cat's Whiskers 2010-2012 and I am, therefore, very keen on 'Taking Your Writing Seriously'. My view is that fan-fiction is an excellent 'primer' for someone who has just started out writing (whatever type) and also for anyone moving into fiction writing from another writing field, as was the fact in my case.

If you are writing an AU story, you do have leeway, but otherwise it is only courteous and respectful to your readers, and a good way of honing your research skills, to make as much effort to be as accurate to canon as possible – if you are serious about being a proper writer, you need to learn and practice doing proper research and getting facts right – otherwise you will end up being a "must read" for all the wrong reasons – like people only watch Ben Hur for the centurion wearing the wristwatch, or Braveheart for the battle scene where the man falls over to reveal a pair of very modern jeans under his kilt – or the collectible historical romance set in 17th Century England where the hero invites the heroine to 'freshen up' in his indoor bathroom…with flushing WC.

It also shows your respect to the creators of the show, the scriptwriters and production crew who film the series and work long into the night editing it all together, often in atrocious weather or stuffy little mixing suites but who never get the glory; remember the cameraman and boom operator are also out there filming in the howling gale/downpour for fifteen solid hours and they never get any red carpet treatment. If you've ever gone to a fan convention/Comic Con have you ever taken ten seconds away from salivating over Benedict Cumberbatch's cheekbones or Lara Pulver's particulars, depending on which way you sway, to let Steve Thompson or Steve Moffat bask in the fan-love? For another example, all those shows filmed in England or Vancouver, where the weather is wet or wetter - and the actors themselves, who work very hard and put a lot of time and effort into getting their on-screen characters "right" and again work through illness/injury (e.g., Jared Padalecki's broken wrist in Supernatural, and Alex O'Loughlin's shoulder injury in Hawaii 5-0) or things like pregnancy (e.g., Erica Cerra in A Town Called Eureka) and other stresses to give the viewer good value.

As well as being respectful to everyone involved with the show you are writing about, adhering to canon tropes also gives you great story material. Shows like A Town Called Eureka is very good for giving you snippets of plausible sounding 'real life' Scienceze, without drifting into Star Trek techno-babble. One of the best things about Hawaii 5-0 the 2010 reimagining is that because all the episode titles are in Polynesian, and both Polynesian and Pidgin are used in the show, is that it really makes you think about **words** and **context** and **language** – making sure that character 'A' really does talk like that does a great deal for honing your ear for dialogue and helps you create fictional realisms by giving your characters 'authentic' voices – Danny Williams uses words like 'ergo' and 'commensurately' in context and with precision, even in the midst of a cargument or Danno-rant, but he does not use words (unlike Steve McGarrett/Chin Ho Kelly/Kono Kalakaua/Kamekona), such as 'brah', 'hoa', 'lanai', 'aloha' 'da kine', 'pakalolo' etc.

I have tried my best in this regard, but it has been a bit difficult: dark colours, especially dark eye-colour, don't show up well on screen And of course, that doesn't account for the fact that in Real Life, every person's eyes change colour several times a minute, depending on the amount of literal light reaching the eye, the individual's emotions, their physical level of tiredness or alertness and so on; any accurate/true-to-life novel would never contain anything else other than 400 pages of what colour a person's eyes were every twenty seconds or so.

The same applies to everyone else – if you have ever watched any TV shows regularly and then met or seen some of the cast in real life you will know that moment of surprised 'Huh' because the camera really does change how a person's height, weight, body posture, hair-colour, eye-colour, skin tone and voice sounds **appear **to be from what they actually **are**, as well these also being just as much affected by the person in question being ill, tired, happy, alert, etc. Not to mention of course that actors go into 'make-up' which again alters the colour of their eyes, skin-tone, etc.


	2. Chapter 2

_**Disclaimer, Rating, Summary, Credits and all Notes:**__ Please see Chapter 1._

**Holmesian Logic**

**Part 2**

**Chapter 2**

For a moment the world seemed to whirly-gig around him but the figure in the doorway remained in place.

Sherlock Holmes…

All upturned greatcoat collar and defined cheekbones himself…and looking remarkably chipper for a bloke who'd swan-dived eighty foot off St. Bart's roof six months back…behind His shoulder, with unwitting irony appearing to be just a disembodied 'head' due to Sherlock's six-feet-plus frame blocking everything from view…

_Irene Adler_…looking even perkier than Him, particularly for a woman who'd been beheaded by Muslim terrorists in Karachi a year ago.

"Well…this has got to go down as the ultimate _Mark Twain_ obituary moment." The numbness was comfortably familiar – he'd experienced it several times in the service, like in Kandahar when he'd realised a lot of the blood all over his khaki was his _own_, and that there was a reason his right arm and leg wouldn't move and his right lung had apparently decided to take early retirement from all that moving-in-and-out malarkey.

"John… …"

Sherlock Holmes, actually reduced to monosyllabic? _Yes indeed, we are down the rabbit hole and have swigged back the bottle marked 'drink me_' _in one swallow…_

"You need to be careful, Mrs Hudson is downstairs – Mrs Hudson knows," he corrected, as the cheekbones went from clearly outlined to actually sticking out because of facial muscles tightening…_delineated_, Sherlock would have told him to put in their blog: _went from delineated to visibly protruding_…_as a university educated Englishman John you have a vocabulary of over 500,000 words, so why do you persist in only using the same 500? It baffles me why educationalists in this country despise elitism and excellence and strive for banality and mediocrity. We have one of the most expressive languages on Earth; we are one of only six languages that even have the concept of a Thesaurus or actually needs one – if people want to read your blog you need to get them up to your level of language, not dumb down to some Politically Correct common denominator…_

The words of that long-gone semi-forgotten but classic-Sherlock snippy rant echoed inside his head for a second, before the Sherlock here and now parted his lips and spoke new words:

"She yanked open the kitchen door to throw something at No.223's cat as we came in through the back garden…"

"Ah, that explains the clattering I heard from downstairs. What bit it?"

"Her biggest casserole dish – she was wiping it dry at the time and the kitchen floor is tiled. She's gone off to that late night place to buy another one."

_And calm herself down from the near heart-attack of opening her back door to what looked like the start of a zombie apocalypse…_but if Mrs Hudson knew now…

"How long has Mycroft known?" _the sadistic bastard_.

"Since I…we…went to see him this morning to...explain…that I…was back."

_Yeah, right, that's why you're also stumblingly incoherent for the first time ever and why I've got some prime real estate for sale at a song…in central Kabul. _"And _un_officially?"

Ah yes, the wince was a merely a slight tightening of the eyes – stress, rather than laughter lines – but still detectable.

"I…needed to use some of Mycroft's…connections…to obtain certain funds and information…he noticed."

_And figured it out in about five seconds flat…and never told __**me**_…_beyond sadistic bastard. _"Well your timing is impeccable for killing three birds with one stone – Mrs Hudson, me, and Greg's coming round in half an hour so…"

Sherlock said nothing, but then he didn't really have to.

"Oh, I see. Greg _isn't _calling around at all _now_ because Greg Lestrade also already knows." The calm numbness considered this admission writ large across Sherlock's face and agreed it had done its bit and could now retire from the field and let others – like _insane fury_ – have a turn.

"He was there - seeing Mycroft this morning when we arrived. Mycroft's secretary was so startled to see _me _that she didn't say he had someone with him…"

_She just stood there pretty much like I am, looking like a stunned goldfish and you, being you, barely even registered she was there because you strode unexpectedly in for full dramatic effect with your swirling coat and your chiselled cheekbones and didn't even slow down as you swung open the door to beard your brother in his den…_

"So there was only the one _mushroom_ left…" He let the anger rise, because he deserved to, "Any particular reason for picking _today_ for your re-enactment of Lazarus?"

"It…I've done everything I can to destroy Moriarty's network now…there was no planned day but it wasn't…it wasn't fair to let you…you don't need to _do all this packing up_…"

"_Why?_" He said it because he could, and because he meant it, and because, yes, it was _sweet_, to see the banked fear in the cruel bastard's eyes surge and darken the pale irises from blue to near black, to see that tiny flinch, instantly controlled though it was, to see the slight flush across the skin drawn taut across those cheekbones drain to a chalk white pallor, to see the throat move in a convulsive swallow as the lips soundlessly framed what might have been one word – John…

And it was enough.

Because Irene Adler, stood there as still and silent as a shop window mannequin, had been right – there was nothing sexual in their relationship, but they were still a couple…only right now it felt more like _Morecambe and Wise_ than King David and Prince Jonathan…actually it felt more like Julius Caesar and Brutus.

So…he straightened his spine into parade rest and drew in a deep breath; the sharp slicing gesture of his hand cut off whatever Sherlock had been about to say. He enunciated to be quite clear: "You. Are. An. _Idiot_."

Those eyes closed tight, for a single fraction of a moment, and the flush came back to those damn cheekbones and the throat moved in another less pronounced swallow…but at least the berk _was _too smart to smile.

"John…"

"Ah." He pointed his finger – Mother's Finger, the 'wagging finger', the Finger of Power, the Finger of Thou Shalt Not – at the miscreant's chest. "_You _are going to go downstairs and make _me_ the best mug of tea in the history of Britain. Then you are going to bring it back up here, and we are going to sit down, and have a little _chat_."

"Uh…"

"_Now,_ Sherlock." He channelled a bit of the most _'you 'orrible little excuse for an yuman bean you'_ Regimental Sergeant Major he'd ever met and in addition was pleased with being able to pull off hissing as a command a word with no 's' in it.

"Tea." Sherlock turned and went back downstairs with a sort of blank look on his face, as if relieved to be able to start off small and build up to the complicated bits…

Huh…which now left him and the ultimate _femme fatale _to make conversation across the width of the room?

Well at least one question he _didn't_ need to ask; now Sherlock had moved from standing in front of her:_ that_ outfit was obviously _not_ concealing his Browning…it was a 'restrained' slate-blue-grey-exactly-matching-my-eyes version of that white dress and little shrug jacket thing by Steve McQueen…no hang on – dead alcoholic macho BS actor –

…_Alexander_ McQueen - dead druggie gay fashionista – that from newspaper photos had clearly been her favourite outfit back when she had been an oxymoronic 'respectable prostitute' in Belgravia, _before _thinking she could flick Sherlock's nose and get away with it… 'On the peg' it had probably looked deceptively ideal to convey 'discreet and demure modesty'…on _her_ it was so figure-hugging he was surprised it didn't make breathing an optional extra…which meant the big lug currently off stage must have put the Browning in one of his coat pockets …because Sherlock had thought...as if he would really have ever used it to…the Muppet.

"Thank you."

He looked up sharply; he thought they'd instantly come to some psychic agreement to study the carpet and pretend each other wasn't there for the duration.

"For not making him beg."

_Seriously? _"Of course not. That's _your_ job, as I remember."

She didn't avert that damn dissecting gaze. "He would have. He _will_, if that's what you demand, to make you stay."

_I've never begged for mercy in my life_…

As if she heard the echo of that long ago statement made in this very room, she said softly, "You're not a _mushroom_, John. You were last not because you were the least but because you were the _most_ -"

"Important? Really? Let's see – Molly, you, Mycroft, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson and next door's _cat _knew before I did. I'm finding that a bit hard to take right now."

She didn't flinch or flush or do anything but gaze at him with annoyingly analytical calm. "You _know_ him. He's not afraid of anything…but _you_. Every day for these past six months…he was so scared of having to face you, having to admit his deception after all what you've been through on your own these past months and he practically had a panic attack every time you sat there in that armchair gazing at Moriarty's shrivelled-up I.O.U. apple nursing a tumbler far too full of Scotch in one hand and that blasted Browning in the other…"

_Hand…_"It was _your_ hand."

Automatically she looked down at the appendages in question – blood red nails to perfectly complement the lipstick, but now sporting a short, practical trim rather than previous semi-talons, indicating a more active lifestyle than puttering around a Belgravia mansion in her skivvies – very nice, very expensive skivvies admittedly – providing a bit of 'recreational scolding' to the _cognoscenti _of that kink. On one wrist she sported a 'silver' (he'd bet that metal was really Platinum) oval-faced watch, and on one finger a single ring – pinkie-fingernail size teardrop diamond - that expertly trod that fine line been exquisite and exclusive and vulgar and tasteless.

"Just before I…blacked out..." _with a little help from a non-accidental cyclist, I bet, _"_that _hand pulled _mine _away from…Sherlock's. Your nails were unvarnished, mind…to help you stay incognito in the crowd? Returning his favour from Karachi I take it?"

"He needed to disappear completely so he could ensure Moriarty's web was as thoroughly destroyed as he could possibly achieve…Moriarty's lot even tried to infiltrate the homeless network, a few weeks after…Sherlock…when they thought of it…I wasn't on anybody's radar at all since I'd been universally accepted as dead half a year already by then…"

"You decided to help out the amateur living dead bloke…Of course," the notion came to him, "a beautiful woman wandering around on her _own_ attracts attention and a man on his own attracts_ suspicion_ – and attention, with _those_ cheekbones. But a man and woman together, well, welcome to 'everywhere' on the planet..." the _sixth _type of people who could be invisible in plain sight…

She nodded, briefly, showing a flattering lack of surprise at his acumen.

"Especially if you were clever enough to…" he paused and squinted rather obviously at her unadorned right hand, where, yes indeed, there were narrow bands of red skin and faint thin marks around the base of the third finger, as if more than one small circular, and a little tightly ill-fitting 'make-do' object had been put on and removed several times. "…Yes, add a trio of rings to your third finger: wedding band, engagement ring, eternity ring - and its hello 'Mr and Mrs Smith', a la Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie."

"Yes…we swapped bold for bland, Prada for Primark and Gucci for The GAP. Jeans, T-shirts and trainers instead of suits, haute couture and kitten heels. Besides the radical change of wardrobe we also made sure we always went out and about together not alone and it worked so well that even Moriarty's…hirelings…who had had Sherlock's face memorised, just looked right past us when we were three feet away – not that they looked for very long, fortunately – the dead don't pay well, and can't be harassed if they stiff you for your salary."

He didn't even nod as his brain stuck at - _Sherlock in sweatpants? _"Crikey…you didn't go native, you went _suburban_…"

Now she shuddered as if at the memory of Dorothy Perkins and Next. "Yes."

"Are there _photos_? Footage? YouTube?" he couldn't resist – the mind boggled at the thought of _her_ slutted up like a cast member from TOWIE and _him_ in a football shirt and maybe even…shell-suit bottoms? _Ah…England is the most surveilled country in the world; Mycroft and his 'be afraid' CCTV camera trick taught me that in Brixton…please let there be footage…ah, dear, dear Mycroft, I'll drop by soon._

She shuddered again, and not theatrically. "_No._"

"So…what now? Triangulated domesticity? We all make like an episode of _Friends_ with a halved cast roster due to 'the cuts'? Me and Sherlock and his booty call makes three?" he was deliberately impolite – she could take it, she was a dominatrix!

She actually chuckled for a moment. "_God, no_…"

Then she became serious – proper serious, like in Battersea, when she had actually expected him to be okay with what she'd put Sherlock through…what Sherlock had now put _him_ through…

"_No_, John. For us, familiarity breeds….mundanity. Being like any ordinary couple would…"

"I get it." he did _not _need to know the inner workings of their 'relationship' over the past six months, thank you very much.

"I _do_ get it," he cut her some slack as he saw the anxiety in her eyes – not quite as composed as she was projecting.

Given how things had ended and what she'd pulled on Sherlock last time, in any other circumstances he _would_ have genuinely been happy to send her swimming in the Thames in concrete Laboutins. But he could unbend a little, particularly as he knew exactly what dealing with a 'full on' Sherlock 24/7 for months on end was like…he was half-tempted to suggest they form a support group 'Survivors of Sherlock', because he suspected she'd seriously consider it.

"Back when I was…overseas…" no need to admit he'd done more than one 'black ops'/plausible deniability/tell-you-but-I'd-have-to-kill-you mission, "I, uh…'met' a few International Special Forces teams – Mossad, FSB, the Deuxieme Bureau and the Yanks. I got to know a few U.S. Navy SEALs quite well. Their divorce rate is astronomical for obvious reasons…You can't share your life with someone if you can't share your life experiences with them…But one guy had got married at like 22 and had just done their 15th anniversary. Half his mates claimed he was drugging his missus…"

"And they couldn't have said themselves whether they were entirely joking in that semi-belief," she murmured, showing an immediate understanding of the subtext that had taken him about ten minutes to work out.

She didn't do anything so plebeian as to shrug when he raised his eyebrows but her shoulders made an infinitesimal tremor. "I have a PhD in Human Psychology and an MA in Behavioural Pyschoanalytics, John. The basis of all _consensual _sexual acts – that involve more than one participant who can think for him or herself at any rate – is nothing to do with _control_, and everything to do with _trust_. A Professor Andrew Rose wrote the standard theses on the subject within BDSM and BDSD cultures if you ever…need to research…"

He didn't respond verbally but didn't give her a look of repulsed incredulity because he was neither repulsed nor incredulous – given the bizarreness of some of the cases he and Sherlock had been involved in – or rather than Sherlock had dragged him into – BDSM was quite mainstream in comparison…

Probably understanding that all too well, she went on, "To be a successful Dom…to be _allowed_ to be a Dominant or a Dominatrix _at all_ in the BDSM culture requires intensive training to produce an excellent grasp of human psychology and psychoanalysis that is above all else applied _inwards _to his or her own flaws not _outwards_ to his or her Sub's perceived failings. A Dom who can recognise his or her own inner turmoil is more capable of being able to take their Sub into subspace – sub 'headspace' - because he or she really understands the subtle nuances of strong emotion, of helplessness, and what that feeling and being so does to a person psychologically and emotionally. A Dom who is able to admit he or she can't control everything is a far better Dom and safer person than one who is so arrogant as to believe he or she can control anything they encounter. A Dom who doesn't or refuses to understand the importance of understanding the intellectual and emotional context of dominant and submissive motivation, reciprocity, of emotional responses and psychological positive and negative stress triggers…why person A reacts to X with B and why person C responds to Y by D instead…is a danger to him or herself and everyone around them, physically, psychologically and emotionally."

"I get that…being restrained, even if it's only in 'play' means the person being restrained needs to trust the one doing the restraining absolutely, especially in him or her being able to read the situation properly and stop or change the situation if necessary." He acknowledged, even though BDSM/BDSD - Bondage, Dominance, Submission and Discipline/Bondage, Dominance, Sadomasochism and Discipline – had never been his thing, certainly not after a childhood of verbal conflict and physical altercations with his sister – his older, taller, heavier, stronger, faster sister.

He offered, "An Army psychiatrist friend of mine, who was as far as I know is still 'in' BDSM culture as a Sub, and who also has a civilian Police Consultant/Liaison role between those 'in the life' and police investigations, once told me that, '_it takes far more strength to kneel before someone than it does to stand beside them, and far more self-knowledge and humility to know, and more importantly accept, what you can't control to avoid losing control at the worst moment. One of the reasons I'm so secure in my lifestyle is that this culture is very good at policing itself – and enforcing the sort of rubber hoses in the middle of the night punishments for those who transgress – because we can't afford otherwise. It only takes one rogue Dom – or too-sub Sub – who let things get out of hand – to give the press and the meddlers and psychobabblers half-truths to use to vilify us in the media. Some background in the theoretical psychology research disciplines – no pun intended, Watson, mate – is a big plus for anyone trying out or in the life already.'_"

Her expression was tinged with relief at his comprehension, "Your Army friend was right. You need to understand first the mindset of other people; reputation and trust are everything in our world – there are abusers and mentally unstable who think they can use the 'Dom' label as a cover or an excuse for domestic violence or emotional-psychological abuse of others, and there are _faux _Subs who have experienced some trauma who should be in counselling or therapy…"

"And who are the ones who have the Big Sub-Culture Freak Out and go running to the police or the press about being victims because they can't handle their own fake coping non-coping mechanisms when those suddenly stop working, often at the worst possible moment for them to have a psychotic break?" he put in shrewdly.

"Yes. That's why the second key criterion is to understand your own psychology – the reason BDSM relationships tend to last is because it is _very strongly encouraged _good practice that everything be discussed in embarrassing detail, and committed to an official typed-up contract, signed by both Dom and Sub, preferably in the presence of and witnessed by experienced lifestyle practitioners so everyone can prove who agreed to what and not, before anything gets physical or sexual – _safe, sane and consensual_." A wry smile curved her perfect blood-red lips, "The irony is that the Bible forbidding sex before marriage actually works best – delaying sexual relations with each other for at least six months after you start dating is one of the few things that significantly _increases_ the chances that the relationship will last."

"Sure, once you remove sex from the equation and the commensurate hormone flood clouding reason and judgement, you tend to be a lot more honest with each other. I noticed in…the service…someone once told me that, '_at its heart, every adult relationship you have will be about friendship, or the lack of it. Concentrate on making the woman your friend before your lover and you'll have a much greater chance of a HEA..'_ Happy Ever After, I mean. I noticed that the guys who met someone online and wrote letters and Skyped and emailed over a period of six months or over a year before actually meeting up in person had a much better chance of making the relationship work long-term, because they usually ended up having all the Deep and Meaningful conversations and the impossibility of sex took the pressure off and helped them to really understood their compatibility or lack thereof way before they started bumping uglies and complicating the issue."

"That's the nature of BDSM culture. To ignore a Safeword or to transgress the hard limits set by both parties is an absolute taboo, an unforgivable 'no'. We have to be able to trust each other to honour trust, so everything is hammered out in the cold light of day, sobriety and logic and made legally binding by contract. To do that people need to know their partner and him or herself, so the need to be a Sub, or a Dom, or a Sub in some situations and a Dom in others, to leave their D/s relationship strictly in the bedroom or be practitioners twenty-four-seven, is what everyone who comes into the life is taught," a smile flashed across her face, "long before anyone gets to the whips, chains and pink furry handcuffs."

_Good grief, are we actually teetering on the edge of Having a Moment, here? _

He moved on hastily, "A week or so later, I sort of made sure I got chatting to his wife at this networking thing, and maybe it's the doctor thing about me but she let slip…she was a very private person. She'd not had one of those horrendous misery-lit childhoods or anything," he waved a hand to indicate the current literary fashion for memoirs by those celebrities unfortunate enough to have parents and-stroke-or wider families that had been mad, or bad, or sad, or various combinations of all three, "but she'd been orphaned at a young age and taken in by her aunt and uncle with four kids of their own and minimum wage jobs. She'd had to survive on her own resourcefulness as a kid, and the reason their marriage worked – for_ her_ – was because it _wasn't _normal, was _because_ he was away so often – the thought of him being there all the time gave her claustrophobic anxiety attacks…She was already planning for when he had to switch from active service to desk-duty when he had to ice his knees or don spectacles or whatever, so he still wouldn't be around all the time. She genuinely loved him, but she couldn't have handled what people would consider a 'normal', 'typical', 'ordinary' marriage…Suburban would destroy…what _you _have."

"Yes." She looked relieved at his understanding. "But from time to time…"

"You will be around, when he needs you." It came out like an order, because it was one and she inclined her head in acknowledgement.

From downstairs there came a sort of _whump-click-rattle-bop-thunk_ sequence, as if someone holding a tea tray with both hands was using their arse-hip-elbow-foot to open the connecting door from 221A at the bottom of the stairs…and when he looked back again there was nothing there except for a faint after scent of delicate perfume and the far door leading to the back stairs was slightly ajar…

_Continued in Chapter 3_

© 2013, The Cat's Whiskers

All rights reserved.

Author's note:

The two novels referenced are Power Exchange and Safeword by A.J. Rose, which incorporate within the story structure a detailed psychology of the BDSM/D lifestyle/cultures. Please note both novels are crime/thriller/romance cross-genres and if you prefer your murder mysteries to be more Miss Marple (little grey cells) than Dirty Harry (blood-drenched gore) and your romance to be M/F not M/M you may want to avoid them.

NB – In reference to the above two novels and BDSM and BDSD cultures, I have very little knowledge of the _Fifty Shades of Grey _trilogy; whilst E.L. James' success as a middle-aged 'ordinary' fan-fiction writer is nice to see to us fellow fan-fiction writers, the books have a great deal of technical issues in the writing and needed a great deal more editing and rewriting in terms of plot and characterisation to bring them up to standard as original fiction (they were originally _Twilight _series fan-fiction based on two minor characters in the books).

As I understand it, FSoG is not classed as BDSM romance because the heroine is not a 'true' submissive. She submits only to please her lover, rather than being a Sub by choice, and a great many people have protested about 'the seriously psychologically disturbed Christian Grey' as the hero.

I suspect that in real BDSM culture, Grey would be rejected as an abusive individual using to make the 'Dom' label a cover or disguise for sexual and physical violence of women and that the female lead would be rejected as a _faux _Sub who needed counselling and therapy rather than sex games. However, I know nothing of the culture and do not presume to speak for practitioners, so I am happy to be corrected in any errors.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Disclaimer, Rating, Summary, Credits and all Notes:**__ Please see Chapter 1._

SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!

NB – From here on in these chapters give my theory© for how Gatiss/Moffat & Co., faked "Sherlock Holmes'" plunge from the roof of St. Bartholomew's Hospital.

If you don't want read any explanation but want to wait and see what happens in Series Three – don't read any further – and if you have not yet watched the Season 2 Finale Episode, please be aware that these chapters also refer back to Series 2, Episode 3 in some detail.

**Holmesian Logic**

**Part 2**

**Chapter 3**

There came a rattle from the stairs and Sherlock carefully walked in carrying Mrs Hudson's sturdiest tea-tray – and one of her best tea services: teapot, hot water pot, milk jug, sugar bowl, tea strainer bowl, two cups with proper old-fashioned 'dish' saucers a man could pour tea into to cool and then sip…

Crikey, there were little Diamond-and-Crown pattern VR on it…Mrs Hudson's Victoria Diamond Jubilee set that she had inherited from her grandmother, housekeeper to the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, for saving the then Duchess's blushes when a local group of dignitaries including one of the adult Royal children had 'popped in' for a small soiree as part of 'mummy's Jubilee' and the Duchess had forgotten all about it…

Whilst the Duchess temporised, Mrs Hudson – not this one, _that _one – had appeared and ceremonially presented the Royal Prince/ess Whoever with tea and the outrageous fib that the Duchess had created a special Jubilee blend from the family's overseas estates in Ceylon in honour of mummy/Her Majesty and would he/she like to taste test it?

According to Mrs Hudson – _this _one, not that one, after that save, the Duke and Duchess had seized the breathing space and managed to get everyone well-oiled on port, sherry and minor gambling so they didn't notice the lack of real food on offer or that the canapés/hors d'oeuvres/crudités were rather inelegantly thrown together. Mrs Hudson had also noted that her grandmother had cannily got actual cash out of the grateful duo that had seen the family through some lean times...

Not that he would stay lean if he scoffed more than a couple of these…There had obviously also been a quick trip around to _Speedy's_ for a supply of their shortbread, as a selection of fingers, rounds and chocolate chunk were decoratively laid out in an geometric alternating pattern on a _matching _tea-service plate – excellent for dunking. Well, he _had_ told a compulsive overachiever to make the tea - a compulsive overachiever on a mission…

Sherlock set the tray down, showing not the slightest hint of awareness that anyone else bar the two of them had ever been present.

Well, he would happily fall in with that scenario, no problem; no way did he ever intend to go near any conversation that would develop along the lines of: _'So, Sherlock, you and the world's most infamous prostitute for the past half-year, what was all that about then?' _Given Sherlock's tendency towards autistic literalism it was entirely possible he would respond seriously with something like _'We both like to thrash people with a riding crop…except I like to do it to dead people and she likes to do it to live people…'_

No; _no indeed_, as Mycroft would put it.

He put in the milk, then poured himself a full cup, adding a couple of sugars – idiosyncratic reactions be damned - stirring it vigorously before he sat in his armchair, taking a big sip – because what he really, really wanted was to take out that bottle of 20-year-old Malt and swig it from the neck, and never stop…_my best friend's not dead, it's wonderful…my best friend tricked me and put me through hell…I want to kill him.._.

But…Ah, the great British cuppa…in the end it was just the ticket for dealing with any lying, deceitful, not-dead-thank-you-lord, best-friend-you-bastard. Sherlock sat in 'his' armchair and poured his own tea, taking a drink as if he too, were seeking succour of the soul.

"So, eighty feet down but not out."

Sherlock nodded but wisely remained silent.

"Go on then, brainy is the new sexy and all that…"

Looking as if he'd suddenly developed toothache, Sherlock stumbled, "The body…I…"

"Oh, I know who the body was; correction, rather, I know _what_ 'the body' had to have _really _been…although I'm not quite clear on _how_ you pulled it off."

"The body?"

"Unconsciously…I've always known…When I saw you and…her…standing there it just clicked." More tea, to help process that instant moment of clarity, "In that moment I looked up and saw you, Sherlock-alive, my brain didn't go, '_What!?_' but instead, '_Of course_.'"

Sherlock took another sip of his tea, and was clearly happy for him to talk which was probably wise at this point, as he still didn't know whether he was going to hug or hit him: "Like you said…before, it was all about the_ idea_. If James Moriarty's 'Discredit and Destroy Sherlock Holmes' Masterpiece Theatre was going to work he had to make it convincing enough to take seed and germinate doubt in the people that _really _mattered. Those people were certainly not the fickle public, or that gullible tabloid hack Kitty Riley...who names their kid after a house cat?"

He picked up a shortbread chocolate chunk round and placed it on his saucer momentarily while he continued working through it out loud, "Those people were _us –_ Mrs Hudson, Mycroft, Lestrade, _me_. Successful con artists never approach their victims directly but use an innocent dupe, a genuinely sincere 'front man' patsy as a conduit to manipulate even the suspicious and cynical. Who would be more innocent and sincere than a child, or better, two children, who would both corroborate each other's tale, both confirming you as the Big Bad, so enter Max and Claudie Bruhl."

He dunked the round, and munched it appreciatively; Sherlock sat in a posture that was neither rigid nor relaxed but something in between, silently sipping his own tea.

Taking another swallow – Sherlock _did_ know how to brew up a good cuppa, which was fortunate considering how much of the hot ambrosia the pair of them could – _used to_ – get through in one session, he said confidently: "You obfuscated."

"I did?"

"After Claudie Bruhl had taken one look at those cheekbones of yours and screamed blue murder, you told me and Greg Lestrade that Moriarty had used the suggestibility inherent in children to manipulate her, but you knew it was a lot more than that. Moriarty could suggest all he liked, but if his plan was going to work those kids _had_ to be _genuinely_ convinced beyond all doubt and attempts to persuade them otherwise that _you_, Sherlock Holmes, had been the one that kidnapped them." He raised his teacup slightly in lieu of waving his hand at _those _defining cheekbones.

He lubricated his vocal chords with another quick swallow before he carried on, "Now, no way was mere suggestion going to pull that off, no matter how repeated, especially with a bright little boy who read _spy _novels and who, despite his young age, was smart enough and brave enough in a moment of immediate crisis to take the risk and initiative of leaving a trail of invisible footprints in linseed oil to help their rescuers. So: either you really did kidnap Max and Claudie Bruhl; or James Moriarty paid someone oodles of cash to have a bit of bespoke facial cosmetic work done – _et voila_ one _Doppelgänger_ to go, please nurse."

"His name was Peter Richtiger Schwarz." Sherlock confirmed. "Having an English mother and a Franco-German father made him trilingual enough to skate along as a petty criminal back and forth across the Channel since his teens. Schwarz was my height and build and similar enough eye-colour…His hair was blond and the style I believe…a 'mullet'. But of course any half-competent stylist and dye sorted that minor issue out."

Sherlock took another quick drink of his own tea and cast a wistful eye at the shortbread he had not as yet sampled. "Schwarz was extravagantly well-paid for the procedure - at least until Moriarty transferred the money back into his own accounts, like he did after Jeff Hope – on the condition of total secrecy but fortunately for me, blaggers and braggarts are like that morality tale you were on about once…the fox and the scorpion drowning in the river?"

He suppressed the flare of warmth that Sherlock _did_ listen to him, even when all appearances suggested otherwise. Still. Extremely. Angry. Here…well, very miffed at any rate. "The fox is carrying the scorpion to safety across a raging river when a big wave hits them and the scorpion stings the fox; they will both drown but the scorpion couldn't help it, it was an automatic defence reflex – _it's my nature_."

"Indeed. Well just like the security guard got himself killed by The Golem because he couldn't resist telling people that he'd figured out the Vermeer was a fake, Peter Richtiger Schwarz couldn't help but gleefully 'let slip' cricket-bat unsubtle 'hints' to sundry of his cronies that one night he would mysteriously disappear from his local haunts 'for a few weeks' because he was going to be a part of taking down that meddling do-gooder _Sherlock Holmes_. One of my first ever clients when I started out as a Consulting Detective tipped me the wink the night that Schwarz didn't come into his local pub – he squandered his trilingual opportunities by being far too fond of booze and idly loafing with a coterie of similar parasites – but the information was…disconnected, a baffling minor oddity that didn't correlate to any case or threat until a child I didn't even know existed took one look at _me_ and screamed the place down. Then I knew who – or rather what, by that time – I needed to find."

He was slow, but not stupid. "Of course…Schwarz kidnapped the children at eleven o'clock and delivered them to that mothballed warehouse by midnight, and knowing Moriarty's psychopathic efficiency Schwarz was dead by one in the a.m. – certainly by sunrise at the outside at any rate. Fortunately we found the children within twelve hours of Schwarz grabbing them because Moriarty needed their memories to be fresh and coherent not confused and hesitant from too long under stress. But that gave you a seriously restricted time-limit to find Schwarz's body whilst it was still useable in your defence."

Sherlock nodded that he was the right track with these out-loud suppositions, raising the teapot questioningly.

He nodded and held out his cup for a refill, picking up another shortbread that he held off on for a minute whilst he talked through his thoughts, "In your favour there was that Schwarz never realised he was a dead man walking the instant James Moriarty offered him an improbably large sum of cash to have a bit of work done; he was unlikely to have resisted being killed, so no facial injuries, or knowing Moriarty's penchant for theatrics even knew he'd been murdered – slow acting poison like Carl Powers?" he mused rhetorically for an instead. "But whatever, the important bit was that likely the vitally important facial features identical to you would remain intact on the corpse. On the downside for you was that for Moriarty's Discredit Then Destroy Plan to work, it was imperative that you should not be able to produce Schwarz or more specifically his mirror-image face, breathing or not, so Moriarty would have killed him at the first opportunity which meant by the time we found the Bruhl children you were facing a hunt for a body that had been disposed of over eight hours before who-knew-where…building site foundations, quicklime pit, acid bath, heaved into the Thames Estuary…all of which would destroy those vital _faux _cheekbones."

He paused again to dunk, and then said in a considered tone, "But you have an advantage that Moriarty didn't."

"I think I have several."

Was that an attempt at flattery? No. Obsequiousness wasn't one of Sherlock's flaws – if he felt it necessary to hear his heroically understanding room-mate actually say out loud, '_I'm mad at you Sherlock but I forgive you and yes of course you're my best friend_,' then he would come right out with an appeal requesting that, not try and 'butter John up' to get the desired result.

One of the advantages of having a sociopath as your best friend – double-edged sword though it might be – was an unequivocal albeit often brutal truthfulness and straightforwardness of response – like a _Star Trek _Vulcan, Sherlock could lie, but didn't really see the point of expending time and effort just to spare something as irrelevant and pointless as people's 'feelings'. Momentarily he wondered if Sherlock and Mycroft's mother's maiden name was 'Spock'…

_Focus, John_. "Both you and Moriarty each had your own private army, but with a key difference. Yours, the homeless, rough sleepers and vagrants, is loyal, supportive, cohesive and always on duty, because time and experience have taught them you will come through with money and promises made. Moriarty's consisted of assorted crooks and thugs and only existed in any meaningful form when he paid individual foot-soldiers whose only loyalty was to their own bank account, and time and experience had taught them that there was at least a seventy-thirty chance they'd be stiffed on the promised pay even assuming they survived in the first place, not the way to win Employer of the Year…"

"Essentially; yes. Way back when my first client told me about Schwarz's heavy-handed hints, even though I couldn't calculate the endgame from that bit of data, I still put the word out asking people to keep up being on the lookout for anything… out of rhythm even for London's underworld. I repeated that request with a fresh supply of ten pound notes all around within the hour after Moriarty got himself acquitted of a crime he'd been video-taped committing and for which he'd entered no defence."

"Moriarty's grandstanding didn't bamboozle you or your homeless eyes and ears;, it just put them on alert to expect developments." He realised that had been another critical error on Moriarty's part, whom had presumed Sherlock to be as solitary and aloof form humanity as he himself, and had thus not realised that for Sherlock Holmes the night quite literally had a thousand eyes.

"My street network being the ones who actually found the Bruhl children - and far faster than the official search to boot - gave all my homeless and vagrant contacts a fillip. They were up for more. Just because many of them have some serious issues doesn't diminish their effectiveness – a great many of them are much smarter than practically everyone else around them." Sherlock finished, picking up a shortbread finger to dunk.

_Like Kitty Riley, Sally Donovan and Philip Anderson_ for instance? Sherlock didn't need to name names to imply who he meant. "Let me take a guess: Moriarty paid his usual 'dustbin men' to dispose of yet another anonymous tarp-wrapped object, and as usual he didn't tell them any details, and as usual he made his threats of hideous death if they didn't get rid of it securely. Of course, by that point threats had long since worn off on the scary scale, and, typically for every workman who's ever existed since Ug paid Zog a brontosaurus steak for patching the roof-hole in his cave, the two hirelings simply took the body to their usual dump site in a case of minimum effort for maximum pay and one of your handily invisible army clocked them at it?"

Sherlock polished off his shortbread and confirmed, "Absolutely correct. I got the word from Wignall – my best man in the Docklands - he's from a Liverpudlian docker family…and an ex-serviceman…saw service in the Balkans. There are 680 wharves, active, mothballed or historical, along the Thames Tidesway alone never mind the entire Port of London - plenty of spots ideal for sinking a corpse, and Wignall saw them weighting down one at their 'usual spot'. As soon as the coast was clear he investigated and as soon as he opened the tarp and saw 'me' lying there dead, when he knew perfectly well I was alive he realised Moriarty's endgame, or at least a big chunk of it. He and his men made sure they got the body back to Bart's with nobody being aware of it…"

"Where Molly Hooper put it on ice as part of your back-up plan."

"Molly wasn't on his radar, even though Moriarty used her to meet me in the beginning. She offered to help," Sherlock sounded defensive, as if he had criticised this choice of accomplice, "and she wasn't on anyone's radar, even Mycroft's. She was just as invisible in plain sight as my homeless network."

_And it still hasn't occurred to you that might be entirely deliberate – mind you, it didn't occur to me until very recently. I've recently noticed a big contradiction there, Sherlock, since you…died…too great a dichotomy between calm cool competent professionalism and yet having an adolescent infatuation with you when she's 25? But all anyone sees is an amusing pity-case, not __**her**__. I didn't see her, not really, not until after you'd gone. Deliberately setting yourself up for public ridicule and humiliation might be a brutal way to 'hide in plain sight', but I've got to admit, it's as effective as being a cabbie or a vagrant and both the pay and smell is much better…_but Molly's mystery was a consideration for future meditation.

"So then…" he picked a shortbread finger as well and dunked it, counting 1-2-3-4 in his head so it absorbed the tea but held its shape rather than crumbling into soggy mush in the drink, "…How _did_ you pull off the switch?"

Sherlock put down his teacup, habitually steepling his fingers together. "When Moriarty started the game – with the Tower, the Bank, the prison – I knew that whatever _else_ he would try and do, this time he was determined to _kill_ me, because…at the swimming pool you see…he made a mistake…and it gnawed at him…"

"I know. Moriarty miscalculated," even now it gave him petty pleasure to say it aloud. "When he came back into the swimming pool to kill you – us – he was all gloating at giving us that moment of relief and then snatching it away...at least in his mind. But when he came back in, we _weren't _whimpering in terror, were we?"

They exchanged brief, vulpine smiles. "Moriarty realised that he _couldn't_ kill me, because even if his pet sniper had managed a head shot –"

"The human body's autonomic nervous system is a marvellous thing," he agreed with the cheerfulness of a qualified medical man.

"-my finger would _still _have pulled the trigger in death-spasm and the bomb at his _feet_ would have been the bomb in his _face_."

"They'd have been scraping what bits of him weren't instantly vaporised off the tiling like wallpaper paste for days." He took another chocolate chunk, in homage to that pleasant although unrealised possibility.

"On top of that he could see in my eyes that I might have risked shooting anyway. We were more than six feet away, not on top of it like him, so it's possible we could have survived."

"We _would_ have survived." He corrected confidently and delayed the chocolate chunk dunk to explain, "You know, nobody actually knows who invented the first gun – probably deliberately. It's the one weapon that has no alternative positive function. It will only kill things. There's a very specific area of the brain that deals with firing a gun, and that's telegraphed by the eyes – even a psychopath like Moriarty gives it away, in their eyes. I mean, we'll never ever know now…"

"But?"

"I think…I think Moriarty realised I wasn't watching _him_, I was watching _you_. You don't need military training, you only need to watch any action movie – Die Hard, True Lies, Bourne Bewildered or whatever – to know that a big enough pool of water will absorb concussion blast waves, and shield you from bullets and fire and even if there's structural collapse, will protect against falling masonry. If I'd seen in your eyes that you were going to fire, I'd have body-blocked _us_ straight into the pool. I'm not saying we wouldn't have been injured, but as a military medic I'd have given us 80 to 90 percent survival rate with fully recoverable injuries, even with partial structural collapse. That swimming pool was built by the _Victorians_ who defined work ethic and a belief in the necessity of doing the best job possible as a moral duty, so I'd bet on Queen Vic's architecture against Moriarty's cobbled together bomb vest any day."

"I doubt it took Moriarty more than a couple of minutes to realise that impeccably timed phone call hadn't saved _us_, it had saved _him_, and that was what he would never forgive, that even inadvertently we'd effectively outmanoeuvred him."

"That was why he was obsessed…with his little _Sleeping Beauty_ apple mutilation after he was acquitted. I owe you…" He glanced over to where Sherlock had left it on the mantelpiece where it had mummified rather than rotted, th still discernible on the shrivelled, dried up outer skin.

"He didn't care about money, or power, or even about his self-invented niche as the world's _only_ Consulting Criminal…"

"It wasn't a challenge any more, if it ever really had been." He put his own theory out there, carefully.

He wasn't going to hurt Sherlock with spiteful comparisons, because real friends didn't do that. "When you figured out the why and wherefores of Carl Powers' murder, the one thing that struck me about what you worked out was that it was _too _practised. Moriarty was a kid himself at the time, still. I don't care _how _brilliant you are, every kid starts out as a diamond in the rough before ending up as the Cullinan."

"You think he had killed before, even at that age," it wasn't a question and there was clear, respectful agreement in Sherlock's tone.

"Absolutely although of course now we'll probably never know who his other victims were or what triggered the killing mania; but if he was polished enough to be knocking off other kids before his voice cracked, criminality wasn't a challenge to him by them. Back when Hercule Poirot and Auguste Dupin were the crime solving elite needing to use their little grey cells and dogged persistence to beat the bad guys, maybe, but now, in today's word of cutting edge CSI forensic labs, packed with hi-tech gadgetry that can demonstrate in one week that a battered skeleton in a car park was a King of England, citizen-journalist camera phones and iPad paparazzi, your brother Mycroft's CCTV surveillance state and the like, fiendishly brilliant serial killers who come and go unseen, leave no forensic trail and evade justice for years due to nothing but personal genius only exist in fiction novels." He waved a hand at the stacks of potboilers and thrillers scattered about that Sherlock customarily read, usually with loud exclamations of exasperation at the illogic of the author.

"I think it would be worth looking into his childhood," Sherlock agreed.

He shrugged, "Greg once told me that behind every mass murderer who escapes being caught for a long while there is usually a laundry list of other factors, none of which include personal intellectual genius. A crook who is rich and a bit thick is more likely to escape justice because of being shielded and given 'breathing space' by personal power and wealth than a poorer but more intelligent criminal. When it comes to evading justice, politicking, political agendas, bureaucracy, social engineering, insufficient money and manpower to fund the resources that could catch criminals in days or even hours all have far more to do with success or failure than does intellect and talent. And on top of that they escape because serial killers don't play fair – no criminal does. Just like muggers don't go after bodybuilders or tattooed football hooligans but target the harassed mum trying to herd three kiddies under three or the 85-year-old World War II hero who's a bit doddery on his pins, serial killers don't pit what wits and skill they do have against Royal Marine Commandoes or members of the SAS, they pick victims nobody cares about – prostitutes, vagrants, street kids, or that have no family or friends to raise an alarm, or that other people already _expect_ to die – like Shipman with elderly people, or Allitt with desperately ill premature newborn babies, or 'Angel of Death' so-called mercy killers in cancer and AIDS hospices."

"So Moriarty was already way ahead of the field when he first started his consulting criminal project, you believe."

"I'd bet, well, any wager you'd care to name on it and I don't doubt Greg Lestrade would too. Ninety nine point nine percent of criminals aren't counter-cultural social rebels or downtrodden victims of their fellow citizens like the liberal bigots keep bleating; they're criminals because they're lazy and feckless and stupid. They're also incredibly hidebound and traditionalist – they don't innovate or improvise. You probably know better than me but I'd guess that Moriarty started his Consulting Criminal venture in his early to mid-teens and was so incredibly successful at it from the get go that he was bored rigid by the time he was twenty. In short he had been coasting for years and then up pops _The Science of Deduction_, by S. Holmes, Esquire which was a mildly amusing diversion for a while…and then _I_ come up with my Big Blogging Idea and you were bounced up to _actively interesting_ thanks to _me_ unwittingly but effectively painting a bull's-eye on your back." _Which, now you've put me through six months of emotional turmoil means we're even_.

"There's no such thing as fate, but some things are inevitable in retrospect, have already passed the tipping point before we are aware that they even exist. I was already becoming too much of a nuisance long before you and I met," which was Sherlock-speak for reassuring his best friend that it wasn't his fault. "So, I knew his endgame was my death –"

It was fortunate he'd drunk most of his tea and that Sherlock had put his mug down, as the landline phone suddenly shrilling made them both jump. That was the thing; even _in extremis _he and Sherlock too easily got so wrapped up in a…mutual headspace…of being _them _doing _this_…back-and-forth…that surroundings and also-present people faded into background insignificance.

He stood up quickly as he made his way to the landline. Missuses Olegenski, du Lac and Humphrey only ever contacted him via his mobile phone; due to their age, social class and lifestyle focuses they had luckily 'missed' that John Watson blogger and stooge of the disgraced dead fraudster Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson their Consulting Physician were one and the same.

A happy state of affairs he scrupulously ensured by never attending any call in anything less than a London Banker three piece suit and tie. Going out late night wrapped up in duffle with haversack down into the Tube and changing in the men's cubicle before walking out as an on-call physician with slicked back hair two minutes later had always thrown off the lurking snappers and hecklers and reversing the process when he'd finished the call out to come back to Baker Street nobody had ever tracked him doing his calls and made any trouble for him.

In short, there were only five other people who would have cause to ring _this _phone number, one of whom was in the room with him and three of the other four all knew that Sherlock was in the room with him.

"Hello?" For a moment his mind remained blank, then he gritted his teeth…how had he not realised the voice he'd thought soothing was actually syrupy. "I'm sorry I've got to cancel something's come up…no…yes…very important…I'll try and call you tomorrow – no, this is a bit unexpected. I've got to go. Bye." He replaced the receiver heedless of cutting her off mid-flow as he hadn't been listening anyway.

"What on earth possessed you to start dating a _Daphne_? You _know_ the correlation between names and danger factors; the blog is on my website."

"Really? This from a bloke who's just spent a six month sabbatical with Miss Whiplash?" he challenged. "Move on, _now, _Sherlock."

It was intended to be stern with a frosting of verbal ice, but it didn't quite come off, and Sherlock didn't quite manage to hide a smile – he knew that he was _forgiven_, and that was everything to him.

Still, prudently Sherlock picked up the conversation again. "Given Moriarty's tendency for histrionics, I knew he wouldn't be able to resist the temptation to make my _downfall_ literal as well as figurative, and given his taste for theatrics I banked on that he wouldn't be able to resist when I suggested that our final _denouement_ take place on the roof of Bart's, the place where he and I first met – you and Molly were in the lab as well that day of course, but utterly irrelevant to him I'm afraid –"

"But that's what you were counting on, that we'd be _so_ irrelevant he wouldn't do something prudent like taking one of us hostage and bringing me or her up to the roof with him for your little _tête-á-tête_."

"Quite correct…But fortunately in his mind – and his ego – he didn't need anything so crass or predictably pedestrian."

As he said this, Sherlock suddenly looked tired, rather than wired, and it occurred to him that this was probably the first time since 'dying' that Sherlock had actually gone through what had happened, step by step, and taken the time to properly absorb each event that had taken place as the situation played out. And no wonder, considering everything that _could _have gone wrong. _I'm the therapist now_…

"You took a calculated risk that Moriarty's penchant for elaborate set pieces meant he would try and kill you by somehow forcing _you_ to _jump_ or else him throwing you off the roof – Sherlock Holmes literally dies by _downfall_, cue the irony, rather than him turning up to meet you with something…predictably pedestrian…like a gun, knife, syringe, strangulation scarf…even a cricket bat."

"It was a risk I had to take. I admit I wasn't sure how our confrontation on the roof would unfold, but I thought that his twisted sense of humour meant he would try and make _me_ commit _suicide_ so he –"

"He threatened to kill someone you cared about if you didn't jump – probably hired hitman with a sniper rifle, since he liked the long-distance sudden kill of a poor unaware victim," he guessed as Sherlock gave an affirming nod. "So…Mycroft? No, not him – Mycroft is far too well protected by far too many dangerous people,"_ and too much like Moriarty himself_, "to risk going after," he answered his own question. "So…if he remembered your splendid reaction to Agent Nielson our unfriendly CIA goon roughing up…Mrs Hudson?"

"Yes, _and_ you…_and_ Les- Greg. I either threw myself off the roof or else the three snipers, each one of whom had one of you in their sights…"

"But you had also factored _that _possibility of sniper or multiples thereof into your contingency plan," he surmised, smirking slightly as Sherlock blinked in pleasing surprise at this deduction by the deadbeat room-mate half of the deductive duo.

_I do pay attention Sherlock, even though it takes me a while, but it wasn't that hard to figure out when the most dangerous man I've ever met, including James Moriarty and your brother, is probably the best sniper in the world and back in London_. "Because a sniper's whole concentration and focus is on looking through their rifle sights at the target, not at the window-dressing, which means you could have had a herd of neon pink elephants take the plunge with you in ballet formation like Disney's _Fantasia _and the snipers wouldn't have seen them – or _you_ faking it."

"That's what I was counting on. I was not supposed to leave that swimming pool alive, but I did, which gave me plenty of time to meditate on every last detail I'd observed and deduced whilst he was stood there making like a Bond villain from one of the cheesier entries of that _oeuvre _you seem to prefer – "

"The Roger Moore years – style, humour, wit, tongue-firmly in-cheek," he lauded.

"Huh. It was elementary to realise that Moriarty always took care to not only never get his hands dirty himself but to make sure his hired killers were well outside his immediate radius, although in visual line of sight so he didn't need to make incriminating phone or radio transmissions to 'fire' or 'take him out now' like on those overblown American TV shows. Since Moriarty was unwisely attached to symmetry and patterns as well as overblown theatrics, I took another calculated risk that snipers were somehow involved. I admit I wasn't expecting him to…do what he did when he…shot himself…but…"

"He was mad."

"Yes, quite."

"No, I mean medically _mad_. Official physician diagnosis – well, incipiently anyway –completely _bonkers_. Hooper's Disease, a synaptic prion disease – a prion apocalypse actually; discovering it got Molly the Sir William Blizard 2012 Award for Services to Histopathology and her intercalated Degree awarded with First Class Honours six months early."

"She never mentioned it," Sherlock murmured, inadvertently answering the secondary question of whether Molly had _also_ kept in touch with Sherlock over these past few months without letting any hint of that leak out when she had talked to _him_. Yes, indeed, Miss Hooper was clearly a past master at keeping secrets secret.

"And she won't. She told me what she'd found, but I only knew the whole story when I read about it in Bart's _Alumni_ e-mag." Yet another thing to add into the 'pro' column in wondering whether Molly was making every effort to be 'present but never there' – ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of all medics he knew, including himself, would be bragging from the rooftops with bullhorns at discovering a new disease_ and_ having it named after them – especially as the dissertation she was writing on it for inclusion in the next Histopathology textbook would get her a doctorate at her insanely young age.

"He had early onset?" Sherlock looked doubtful.

"Oh not dementia, at least not what we think of as Dementia, like Alzheimer's Disease, or Lewy Body, and so on. Molly will downplay it and tell you she only found it because usually you're ten students deep per cadaver whereas with Moriarty she had free rein, which, admittedly, is true to an extent. Nobody claimed 'Richard Brook's' body because of course he didn't exist, and there hadn't been anybody around before the point he started playing Kitty Riley like a violin as Richard Brook to expose him as really being James Moriarty because Moriarty's immediate family – grandparents, parents, two uncles and an elder sibling, a sister who died aged ten – ahem – all predeceased him."

"Very convenient."

"Yeah, like Greg said, no point in exhuming them now although I think as an academic exercise it would prove enlightening. I think Greg found some cousins in Australia from a couple more uncles who emigrated out there as 'Ten Pound Poms' but nobody who'd recognise Moriarty. That meant Molly had complete freedom with a corpse nobody knew or cared was there. Moriarty's scam of jobbing, third-rate actor 'Richard Brook' was just too good – the press and media were all about _your_ death, not even Kitty Riley gave a column inch to the suicide of her former new BFF."

"And Molly found something." Sherlock leaned forward slightly, his attention totally focussed.

"Actually it was what she _didn't_ find that made her look closer." He wasn't going to go into the psychopathy versus sociopathy differentiation because he had no doubt Sherlock had already examined his own brain structure and psycho-emotional responses out of intellectual curiosity – he had to have known the difference in order to correct Sally Donovan's mutter of 'psychopath' with 'high-functioning sociopath' that first night at Jennifer Wilson's grandparents' house. "With psychopaths there are genetic abnormalities, brain structure malformations in the orbital cortex, which are visible on brain scans."

"A breakthrough which has been carefully kept universally quiet for at least the past 15 years because the next logical – and socio-politically unacceptable - step is to brain scan all newborn infants and discreetly euthanize the monsters." Sherlock opined chillingly with probable accuracy.

"Molly expected to find severe, obvious brain malformations, and Moriarty did have some of them, but a lot milder than most; for some people, evil is still more a choice than a genetic malfunction – A Canadian neuroscientist Professor James Fallon was a genetic psychopath but never became one because he had an immensely positive and well-brought-up childhood. To some extent, even psychopaths have a choice just as much as sociopaths about what they choose to do - which is why you can't justify euthanasia in the cradle." He pointed out. "Anyway, prions are brain proteins, and if they go wrong…its always very, very bad."

"And Moriarty's prions had gone bad."

"Molly said it gave whole new meaning to the word brainstorm. You said that when he came here after he nobbled the jury, he said to you that _you _were 'the final problem' he had to get rid of…"

"He said it two or three times. He seemed quite obsessive on the point – ah, I see, not a coincidence I take it?"

"I doubt it. I mean, he didn't consciously know, he never could – prion-damage diseases are so incredibly rare the odds are…well…beyond astronomical, and most of them are like Moriarty's – the disease is _sporadic _or _spontaneous _in pathology, not hereditary or genetic. His condition was so rare it would never have been diagnosed in years, but the mind is still a strange thing that we understood nothing about – and don't let academic papers claiming to be able to read thoughts and emotions claim otherwise…Personally, I think on some level James Moriarty _knew_ something was wrong and he didn't have much time – he probably already suffered some sort of memory gaps and insomnia or remembered periods when the most ridiculous notions had seemed perfectly rational and sane. If he'd decided to delay his Big Revenge Masterpiece Theatre routine by just three months you wouldn't have had a thing to worry about – his brain would have been mush; he would have been being spoon fed in nappies, something that, given Moriarty's laundry list of victims, I can't feel pity about.

"It was that close?"

"Prion diseases are like those insects – cicadas? They lie inert in the soil for seventeen years and then burst out, mate and die in a one-day-only frenzy. Prion mutations tend to incubate for a long time, years, and then go from nought to boom very rapidly. Of course, Moriarty sending a bullet tearing through it didn't help matters but Molly found enough anomalous brain tissue to end up putting most of his brain on slides and found herself identifying an entirely new prion-based brain disease. I'm not one to go all psychobabble on you –"

"But in this instance you're going to."

"Oh yes." _I'll probably never get this chance to pontificate again; I'm making the most of it._

He began to tick off on his fingers, "I think Moriarty offed himself for three reasons – one, to stitch you up even further legally in the belief that the police wouldn't be above lazily 'assuming' you'd murdered him and then committed suicide. Two, because subconsciously – unconsciously, whatever, I don't care about the nomenclature, Sherlock," he spoke firmly as Sherlock automatically began to interrupt, "he sensed time was running out and the only person who was going to kill James Moriarty was James Moriarty. Three and most of all, I think he did it because he _genuinely believed he'd beaten you_. Like I said, I reckon James Moriarty had been coasting and bored for years. There's a saying in business management courses about customer service, that their 'perception is reality'. Reality as Moriarty perceived it – from his perspective – was that he'd already successfully disposed of you even though technically you were going to breathe for another thirty seconds before you chucked yourself off the roof. The downside of his victory was it meant he had nothing to look forward to, nothing but a return to mundane tedium in a trite world metaphorically potty training criminals with the intellect of a suet dumpling. So he went out – he took himself out – happy and on a high – basking in a delusion of success. Sorry, a bit psychoanalytical there but…"

"I think you're absolutely right. Moriarty as much admitted he was obsessed with me, and it was obvious that was partly because he had nothing else in his life. His universal key code was fiction because he just threatened and bribed key personnel to crash the security systems for him – in the immortal words of Mrs Hudson, all technology in the end is just a glorified calculator with some snazzy PR – but he didn't need such a device really. He could have stolen the crown jewels, or manipulated his way into becoming Prime Minister or married Princess Beatrice and spent the next decade '_Kind Hearts and Coronets_-ing' his way through the heirs to the throne. But all that was too easy, too pedestrian, too _boring_ to pull off."

"But you had a contingency plan to avoid his murder-by-suicide one-act play with you as the sole star, by co-opting Miss Molly as your unglamorous stage assistant."

_Continued in Chapter 4…_

© 2013, The Cat's Whiskers

All rights reserved


	4. Chapter 4

_**Disclaimer, Rating, Summary, Credits and all Notes:**__ Please see Chapter 1._

**Holmesian Logic**

**Part 2**

**Chapter 4**

For a moment the words hung in the air and then Sherlock nodded and blew out a soft breath. "Molly and I set it up before I texted Moriarty to suggest we meet on the roof of Bart's, working on the presumption he couldn't resist it. I knew that he would retreat at any deviation from the norm, so I could only work with what I already had, which was fortunately sufficient. The rubbish collection truck –"

"You jumped into it." He guessed.

"Yes. The truck pulled into the kerb on that side of the building at that same time every afternoon, which was essential. Moriarty and his snipers knew that so when it arrived it was invisible to them in plain sight."

"Whereas they would have noticed - had it not turned up at all or if it had turned up on a day when it wasn't scheduled to be there," he got that too. "I see."

"I couldn't lay any trail whatsoever myself, since if Moriarty got wind of it…so I used a hefty whack of Molly's cash, which I still owe her, to pay the rubbish truck driver to simply do his job only to a more exacting standard. I paid him to arrive punctually, to fill the truck with air bags made to look like refuse sacks beforehand and once he was there to do nothing but idle against the kerb until he heard a loud, heavy thud in the back, at which point he was to pull away at his normal speed – not even Moriarty would notice the truck staying outside the hospital a few minutes longer than usual."

"So since you knew any sniper or snipers would be focussing on their targets and you would only be on the periphery of their vision, you could risk jumping into the truck."

"I let Moriarty goad me onto the ledge, then started laughing and got off again, that was our pre-arranged signal to Molly to be ready. I provoked him and I made him angry enough to let slip that there was a 'stand down code' – a way he could call off the snipers. I think the _fourth _reason he killed himself was to give _me_ no other option or out once he was dead. With the stand down code irretrievably lost I had no choice but to jump – to my death, as he believed - if I wanted to save you."

"And was it a signal to the cyclist, too?"

Sherlock looked down at his hands as if fearing to look at John's face any longer. "Yes. When I arranged for Wignall to send you that fake message about Mrs Hudson being hurt, I had hoped she'd be out shopping or at her sister's – no way for the sniper to find _her_ either. But you would also be safely away from Bart's, because you were the one person who _couldn't_ be allowed near my 'body'. However, if Mrs Hudson was home, you'd realise what was going on and you would have time – you _did _have time - to get back to Bart's before I was ready to take a swan dive."

"The cyclist was Wignall himself, your main homeless network man?" he surmised.

Finally Sherlock looked up, "Yes. John, I swear, the concussion was a genuine unintended accident. When he collided with you, Wignall gave you an aerosol blast of a mixture of sedative and euphoric; it's designed to disorient and mimic the confusion effects of shock without actual shock. You reached the pavement and managed to touch the corpse's hand, but then Ir- _she_- took your hand away and you blacked out."

"Leaving Molly as the Bart's resident forensic pathologist, and with pre-existing Met Police CSI credentials courtesy of Greg Lestrade, conveniently on the scene and able to formally ID your body as a pathologist and as a personal acquaintance, because the most logical candidate – me – was in hospital for the next three days with concussion and shock. When I was discharged it was all over because Molly had formally identified you and a duly sworn officer of the law – Gregory Lestrade – had also seen…he's always known…" The realisation dawned as he said it, "The other Mozart yet again."

"What?"

"Greg Lestrade has _always_ known you _weren't_ dead. Leopold Mozart had a child who was a gifted pianist, a protégé, a daughter, named Marie. But when she was eight years-old Leopold fathered Wolfgang Amadeus and nobody ever noticed_ her_ again. Greg Lestrade is about ten years older than you, he's Mycroft's age?"

"Yes? So?"

It gave him a bit of a fillip that Sherlock clearly had no idea where he was going with this.

"So, Greg made _Detective Inspector_ on his own merits back when _you_ were a spotty, snotty teenager streaming live from mummy's wine cellar." He didn't resist making the jibe. "If – when - he got within six feet of that corpse Molly had confirmed was 'you', he would have clocked the tell-tale surgery scars that cosmetic surgeons hide behind the patient's ears and realised immediately that the corpse was a _Doppelgänger _that explained the real kidnapping of the Bruhl children, and therefore a) that it _wasn't_ you, b) that you had faked your very public Technicolor and Hi-Def demise and c) that Molly Hooper was in on it up to her eyebrows." _And he kept the secret too, didn't he._

Sherlock looked struck by this and pursed his lips. "That does explain his rather noticeable lack of surprise when I walked in on his meeting with my brother this morning very much alive."

"You couldn't let anyone outside Molly Hooper near the body because they would have realised what I did just now when you and your _friend_," or should that be 'pet fiend?' he wondered momentarily, "showed up in that doorway. When a person dies, rigor mortis sets in, but after that period, the body regains flexibility as decomposition begins and the flesh develops a spongy, soft-wax texture. At the time I was concussed and drugged but un- sub- _whatever _consciously – when I touched the hand of the body, I automatically registered that the skin was ice cold and grey, when it should still have been 98.6 degrees warm and pink as you had just died, and also that it was post-rigor spongy. If I'd been _compos mentis_ –"

"You would have realised instantly that no matter what it looked like you were dealing with someone who had been dead for at least four days," Sherlock acknowledged. "Hence, Wignall, on the bicycle… Before I texted Moriarty, Molly had prepped Peter Richtiger Schwarz's head like she was an SF/X make-up girl on a sci-fi film to look like 'impact trauma'. Then she dressed the corpse in one of my suits and my scarf and a duplicate coat like mine that the costume designer lady from the _Navel Treatment_ case made up for me, no questions asked on the QT as a rush job. Molly laid Schwarz out on the pavement seat bench in front of Bart's just adjacent to where the rubbish truck would pull into the kerb and covered him with a tarp and on top of that put the rankest old blanket she could find."

"Sure, nobody is going to go near a vagrant sleeping it off, especially not one you can smell from Southwark." he recognised the ingenuity.

"Molly was standing on the steps out from one of the basement lab exits, hidden below the railings holding one pole braced in the middle of Schwarz's back and another pole tied to the tarp and over-blanket. Me getting on the ledge and then getting back down onto the roof and gibing at Moriarty to make him angry enough to be distracted was her cue to get ready."

"The angry mind exists only for itself," he acknowledged, "the angrier you could make Moriarty before the point of no return the more likely you would succeed in fooling him – you needed to befuddle him enough so that he stayed where he was for a couple of seconds after you jumped before rushing to the edge to look down with victorious gloating at his ultimate victim, too awash with cortisol and adrenaline to realise the real you was being driven away in a dumper truck and he was seeing Schwarz."

"Exactly; I had no way of knowing that those vital seconds would prove unnecessary. I freely admit Moriarty's suicide was the last thing I expected to happen. But it went like clockwork: when I jumped from the roof into the truck, Molly used one pole to roll Schwarz off the seat onto the pavement and the other to slide the tarp and blanket back through the bench slats and railings – the whole move took her one point two seconds. Then she simply scurried up the basement access steps and out onto the pavement where everyone is gathering around the body that it seems has just appeared out of thin air on the ground with massive fatal head trauma. Since such a thing can't obviously happen everyone's brain works to find resolution and makes the logical assumptions; within seconds you have a group of eyewitnesses who genuinely believe they _actually saw me_ fall to my death."

Sherlock lapsed into silence for a few seconds to let him absorb and work through the events, visualising them as Sherlock outlined what had happened.

"Moriarty's minions packed up their guns and went home without noticing that they couldn't see Moriarty on the roof any more either." Sherlock drew in a deep breath, "The one calculated risk I had to take was that Moriarty wouldn't instruct his sniper or snipers to kill you…kill you all…anyway regardless of whether I jumped or not. However, despite his predilection for cheating his hirelings I reasoned he wouldn't really want to spend the money if he didn't have to, but by the same token nor would he be foolish enough to anger professional killers who specialised in long-range kills…not unless he _wanted_ to spend the rest of his life wearing full body armour and a heavy-duty helmet twenty-four-seven…so I risked that his instructions to the snipers would be that if I was dead, they should just pack up and go home without taking the shots – with a businessman's emphasis on the terms and conditions of how they would be paid and what for."

"And you couldn't let me in on the plan at all." He understood, but it rankled.

"John, you are too honest – and I mean that as a compliment of the highest order. You said once, to Les- to Greg – how pitiable it was that we seem to live in a world where a person of honour and integrity is so extraordinary as to be almost regarded as a freak of nature at best and mentally disturbed at worst. You are an honourable man and you _could not_ have carried off a deception on that scale. You _would not_ willingly perpetrate such a deception, even on Moriarty, had he actually loved anyone for his death to matter." There was no doubting Sherlock's sincerity. "And I deeply wish I had not had to do it. But when me and Molly were planning our alternative ending to Moriarty's one-act play, as you put it, Molly pointed it out to me…once Moriarty believed I was dead…I would have ultimate freedom…you raise no defence against an enemy you don't know if there…the opportunity to damage Moriarty…the instant he killed himself, he left his crime empire completely exposed – the opportunity to not just damage but wreak utter havoc on that monstrosity, to stop a stooge filling the power vacuum…"

_Someone like my equally psycho faux friend Seb Moran…_

"…To divert all that money he collected by destroying lives to good and decent recipients…to tear apart his spider's web strand by strand – would never have come again."

"Its fine – no I mean it." He cut off Sherlock's response. "Yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot because…I know you're no more fraudulent than Mother Theresa and I've had to grieve for you for six months with people trashing your reputation– " _and mine_ "-who aren't fit to lick your boots clean. But I _do _understand. I've seen a tiny bit of what you've had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to destroy in action. After you…died…poor Greg got sidelined – moved to oversee cold case reviews. It was a holding pen so his so-called superior Chief Superintendent could have him up for gross misconduct and sack him once the media attention had moved on to the next one minute wonder."

"I know, I asked Mycroft to…stall them."

He grinned. "Well Mycroft didn't need to. I think your man Wignall used his initiative and gave Greg some directions you don't find on a SatNav, or in The Knowledge. He's spent a lot of quality time up and down the Thames Tidesway these past six months has our Gregory and he wasn't mud-larking. So far his cold-case review has solved or provided vital new evidence to solve fourteen missing persons' cases, including three fake-your-death-for-the-life-insurances, eight British murders and two Interpol ones, plus five British armed robberies and a French one. While mucking about around on boats he's also been 'mentioned in despatches' in the Police Gazette for his cold-case reviews being instrumental in taking down two drug smuggling cartels – one South American and one Asian, a prostitute-trafficking ring and two illegal immigrant gangs, plus one home-grown Muslim terrorist atrocity. Thanks to Greg the solved crime stats are heading for the outer atmosphere; there's no way that bloated buffoon can oust Greg now without the Met having to explain why they're getting rid of one of their most successful officers."

"You _really _don't like the Chief Superintendent do you?"

"He swaggered into our home like he thought he owned the place and called you a weirdo," he pointed out. "And beyond that he was offensive to _me. _Professional 'professionals' like him and 'Red Ken' McCluskey and their ilk are the ones who get genuine working-class background people like me smeared as bigots and haters."

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, "Professional professionals?"

He moved the tea tray aside slightly, and stood up. They needed to get on with things or else Sherlock's resurrection would spectacularly backfire on him - on them - but he explained, "There are some people who make a career or a lifestyle out of being a professional at being a Professional Whatever that rakes in money for nothing or gets them a cushy life spent shirking not working, usually on the back of the British taxpayer. They started out as hippies, then jumped onto nuclear disarmament or being faux Gypies with that Traveller scam, then it was eco-mentalism and now it's global warming. When I did my first placement from Welbeck College at Birmingham Teaching Hospital, there were two med students in my cohort, a Muslim girl from Nottingham and a West Indian Londoner – she was a Professional Muslim and he was a Professional BME – Black and Minority Ethnic - to be jargonistic."

"I think I see," Sherlock also stood up, watching as John went over to his laptop and brought-up his long neglected blog. "They lacked a work ethic?"

"They lacked any redeemable virtues. Both of them were bone idle and could have written 'itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini' as the answer to any exam or assignment and still graduated with a medical degree. It was infuriating – I knew several Muslim girls who appreciated how damn lucky they were to have been born female and intelligent in a misandrist Western democracy not a misogynistic Eastern theocracy, and so had worked their backsides off to get an education and have the chance to be at Bart's, and ditto for my charming but bone-idle _faux-_Rasta Londoner-man. But they knew they were bullet-proof…hell, they were thermonuclear detonation proof – they were just _itching_ for someone to point out, 'but you're both bone idle' and they'd have been screaming a variety of '-phobic' and '-isms' from the rooftops –"

"And pursuing a six figure compensation claim to set them up in style for a decade or so?"

"Not half. When I was a locum at – the surgery –" he did not say Sarah's name, "Chloe Reddish the nutritionist was also the Practice Recruitment Manager and was driven to foaming-mouthed fury by the women who turned up for interview who clearly only wanted a job to claim maternity pay from us whilst forcing us to employ someone to cover the work she should have been doing, and those Professional Working Mums who thought demonstrating the inevitable consequence of unprotected sex made them demi-goddesses and who expected flexible this and term-time that because Having Bred Made Them Better than everyone else around them. Since her husband Craig is our deli butcher and keeps us in the good food round here, I thought I'd better reduce her blood pressure and by association his, to keep our sausage supply line open, so I let her in on how both my sister and my father had kept their General Practices profitable and relatively stress-free with low staff turnover and high employee reliability."

"How so?" Sherlock appeared genuinely interested, but then again whilst his intellect towered above everyone else within a thousand miles - with the exception, probably, of Mycroft - his experience was academic rather than practicable, like the genius Oxbridge professors who felt victim to Nigerian spammers.

He had no familiarity with emotional and emotive subjects such as arrogant working mothers who perpetrated such public idecency as the breastfeeding blight, or ethnic minority malingerers, inverted snobs, and the like who knew they could get away with their behaviour because the UK was now a country that punished the victims and bend over backwards to tend to the boo-hoo of villains, unless you had sufficient money and/or power to buy justice or pay for appropriate punishment to be administered by third parties...for a fee.

One of his best men, whom he had got fasttracked up the ranks, had had to take disability thanks to an IED. Going to stay with his elderly granddad, a WWII Para, his descent into PTSD and depression had been halted when his granddad armed himself with a stout stick and used to go out to confront jeering gangs of feral yobs plaguing their suburban estate. In recent years local QUANGOES and the police had taken credit for the plummeting anti-social behaviour incidents on the estate, unaware that Mike's granddad had gone around all the oldies and they'd clubbed together and contributed from their pensions and benefits to pay Mike a 'living wage' of £20,000 a year to be the estate's enforcer and employ his own 'hands on' help/bouncers as and when necessary. Mike had admitted that he had a purpose, focus, and was sustained by the moral outrage of elderly people in his own country being more at risk than vulnerable people surrounded by terrorists in the –Stan countries. Although, Mycroft no doubt knew all about his friend Mike and his activities, at least if his poking his nose into Matters About John Watson that were None of His Business ran true to form.

"My mum, as dad's practice manager and Clara as Harry's PM found ways to only employ White British gay men or Eastern European women. In all the years he was a GP Dad never had to pay two women to do the job of one because that one had got herself knocked up purposely to do so, and he never had any staff member dare ring in at five past nine on the busiest day of the week because her little darling had sneezed once in the night and so she'd been up since five in the morning with him-stroke-her boohoo. If the Poles and Bulgarian women were up since two a.m. with Junior or Little Miss projectile vomiting, they cleaned it up and then came into the surgery on time and did a full shift and then went home. What gets me just as angry as Chloe Reddish used to get is that Chief Superintendent Braithwaite is just the same – he's a class bigot, an inverted snob. He's a Professional Northerner - hides his incompetence and plain rudeness behind that whole 'bluff Yorkshireman' excuse and has a boulder on each shoulder about anyone who can enunciate properly and who was born south of Watford Gap. He's one of those self-serving career climbers who'll throw their own mum to the wolves if it gets them an advantage. Even _Anderson _manages to be ten times the copper just by getting out of bed in a morning."

"Mm," Sherlock thought about that for a moment, then gave a sharp nod of agreement with that assessment, before nodding at where he was putting up his blog and last minute flight deal websites up side by side, "So what are we doing?"

"The technical term is 'getting our arses in gear'," he said crisply, before raising his voice loudly and glowering generally around their living room as he said, "just as soon as the Deadly Duo get their fingers out and get here! Move it Mycroft, and get going Greg!"

"How did you know Mycroft had continued surveillance once I was-" Sherlock trailed off.

"I didn't, not until _she_ said that you'd seen me, quote, 'sat there in that armchair-' unquote," he didn't repeat the rest of what Irene Adler had said, '_gazing at Moriarty's shrivelled-up I.O.U. apple nursing a tumbler far too full of Scotch in one hand and that blasted Browning in the other'_, "So Occam's Razor, either you suddenly added CIA level Psychic Remote Viewing to your repertoire or else Mycroft still had this place wired for sound, so to speak."

From downstairs there came the noise of a door opening – not the front door, but the inner connecting door from the corridor connecting the ground floor Flats 221A and 221C to the entrance hall.

"Mycroft has full _mobile_ connectivity," murmured Sherlock, either as explanation or apology, or possibly both as the stairs creaked under footsteps' one pair stealthy and stalking, like a hunting leopard, the other firm and deliberate and inexorable.

_Of course he has_; Mycroft – and yes, Greg Lestrade behind his shoulder in an inadvertent rerun of Sherlock with Irene Adler's head behind his shoulder – had no doubt watched this entire denouement on an iPad or some wireless in-car screen over the past ten minutes of getting here.

Mycroft as ever was impeccable in a bespoke tailored conservative pearl-grey double-breasted suit; Greg wore a High Street store suit, a charcoal grey single-breasted, as ever with his hands non-threateningly in his pockets, pulling off slightly rumpled rather than dishevelled, and of course appearing deceptively pedestrian and pen-pushing. He also appeared to be not the slightest bit intimidated or wary of Mycroft Holmes enduring and weary of, more like.

But Greg's face had an unhappy tinge of greyness and his eyes were tired. He got that – operating at that level of intensity 24/7 for six months in the knowledge the tiniest infraction would be ballooned into an epic attack on your reputation and personal integrity to get rid of you, having to daily pull the rabbit out of the hat – or the corpse from the Tideway – to stave off the circling wolf pack -

Oh yes, he got that. His being hospitalised in the immediate aftermath of Sherlock's supposed death - had been a godsend – keeping the hysterical public and press frenzy at bay whilst his military discipline enabled him to get into that detached headspace and drag around his psyche at least a thin buffer.

Upon being discharged at three in the afternoon and making his way anonymously by bus from the hospital – since the 'smart money' claimed 'Watson would finagle leaving at midnight or sunrise to evade the press' nobody had expected him to just walk out of the hospital in the middle of a workday afternoon and stand at a bus-stop instead of demanding a blues-n-twos ambulance to bull through the throng. The simple expedient of ordering online from Craig Reddish, with his purchases dropped off by the silently sympathetic and understanding Chloe, and remaining largely in their rooms at 221B and not engaging with any telephonists, tweeters, bloggers, emailers, and the like had seen the sharks go in search of fresh blood – particularly when a series of juicy celeb scandals tripped along in quick succession and the rehashing of a dead fraudster was _so, like, bore-ring!_

He looked around over at the clock. Half the night had sped away. "We're on a tight timetable here."

"To do what?" Sherlock asked again.

"To 'control the narrative'," he retorted succinctly. "The paparazzi have mostly given up now apart from the odd on-the-off-chance snapper, so luckily nobody saw you come here besides Mrs Hudson and next door's cat, but our honeymoon period of you being blessedly incognito is like a vampire - it isn't going to survive much past sunrise, not in this town and not now the Twenty-First Century is where everyone's everyday life is basically lived in a goldfish bowl. Did you come in a cab?"

"No, I – we walked from the Tube." Sherlock's slight hesitancy explained that it was no doubt Irene Adler who had vetoed the cab idea and she had realised that an ordinary couple walking from the Tube exit station was less conspicuous – thank goodness for a dominatrix with a PhD in understanding the human mind.

"Good, that gives us a bit more breathing room, without some cabbie touting the tattle that John Watson might be vacating his tenancy to some upwardly mobile yuppie couple as column fillers to the redtops."

"An accurate summation," Mycroft agreed with no discernible emotion, "I'd say Sherlock's unexpected lack of decease will be headlining News at One tomor- today, unless-?"

"Unless nothing," he found the flights. "We can control the narrative, but not erase it. Too many too interested people still around who haven't disengaged fully, like fans who go to ComicCon as characters from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ a decade after the series ended."

"Too many too invested people about," Greg translated the pop culture reference for the deadly duo, nodding at Sherlock. "Since _The News of the World_ went the way of the dinosaurs London has been snided out with Kitty Riley clones – at every turn there is a down on his or her luck hack, hacker or hacktavist needing to pay the mortgage and desperate to be the one that scoops that little nugget, that a bit of spin that turns into a whacking great diamond and gets their foot in the door or their fingers on the keyboard of a national newspaper with a _regular salary_ plus _pension plan_ again. To them a cabbie's column filler is the Cullinan."

Greg's echoing of his own illustration to Sherlock a few minutes ago answered any lingering doubts he might have had that Mycroft and Lestrade hadn't watched the whole exchange via surveillance. He got over it.

"Ergo, we take the story to them, on our terms, rather than wait for someone to twig and lead the ravening horde to our doorstep – again - which is why we are not going to wait around here. We are going to be business as usual, we are going to be 'yes, Sherlock is alive, yes, Sherlock is taking cases, yes, didn't you notice?' Blasé, élan, nonchalant – take your pick."

"Which is why we are going to see- the _Princesa_? Good grief is she still around?" Sherlock commented.

"Yes and yes. Mycroft, I need _you_ to stop Daphne."

Greg Lestrade managed to wince with his eyes; he momentarily reran what he'd just asked of a psychopathic compulsive overachiever. Oh. Right.

"Let me rephrase: I need you to _delay_ Daphne from getting here until at least after 7.00am to give us time to get to Gatwick."

"The inestimable Daphne," murmured Mycroft in a tone _loaded_ with subtext, but pulled out a small black mobile phone that he doubted very much was a commercially available item or anything remotely pedestrian as an iPhone or that ilk, Mycroft's finger stroking the front screen, "What would be your ETA for her?"

He glanced at the clock, aware of the night retreating from them. "Given I cut her off at the knees, she'll be up at the crack of dawn and out for a cab so as to get here full of mock solicitousness and barbed criticism by 6.30am."

Mycroft's coolly imperturbable face did not alter an iota, but suddenly he was confident that Daphne would find herself unable to secure any form of transportation across London other than her own two feet until Mycroft chose to allow her to do so.

It didn't bother him; Daphne's subtle controlling, and her criticisms disguised as faux sympathy had not been lost on him, but for the past six months quite frankly he had been too numb to care about anything - he suspected that had Sherlock _really _been dead he would have slept-walked into a disastrous henpecked/browbeaten marriage – Daphne wanted a husband she could lord it over by being willing to 'overlook' his previous poor choices and lifestyle so the unfortunate spouse was in the supplicant position of gratitude and would never be allowed to forget it.

Having been thoroughly slated, slandered, traduced and libelled as a co-conspirator in Sherlock's 'frauds' by the press and online media and anyone who could hit keys with opposable thumbs without let up 24/7 for the first two months following Sherlock's 'death', he fell into the ideal husband-victim category.

Sherlock's fingers were already way ahead on his iPhone, "Seven minutes for us to walk to the nearest Tube - twenty-two minutes to the DLR across to Gatwick...the first flight back is...tomorrow afternoon at 12.25pm from Warsaw?"

"Nope'" he input flight times on the website, "We'll need to stay tom - tonight and the next..."

Sherlock was, after all, Sherlock, so he perked up slightly. "How much trouble is the Princessa in?"

"Oh none at all, not for _us_. You'll solve the case in five seconds - ten if you dawdle about it - that's not the point."

"The Princessa is hugely respected and greatly liked, but not a celebrity enough so that you and John turning up on her doorstep incognito and in the middle of the night will go instantly viral - whispers will germinate into rumours that will swirl for a few hours and build nicely on our timetable. On top that, everyone is going to woefully underestimate the acumen and intellect of a 94-year-old because she is a 94-year-old, and, no reporters will or will be allowed to hassle and harrass her, and not now and not ever, nobody is ever going to impugn the version of events as stated with a thousand years of regal grandeur by an Imperial Princess of the House of Hapsburg," drawled Greg, showing he was far more astute and knowledgeable about a lot of things than you would imagine.

Half to himself, half to Mycroft, he outlined, "We need to arrange to get back to London day after next just before tea-time, give them as little time as possible to catch up with us going into Baker Street so the story can't be falsely edited or spun too much before they need to run it on the six o'clock news?"

Mycroft gave a cool nod, of agreement or approval - or more sinisterly assurance that this would be made to be so - and commented to the room generally, "It may be an idea to book return flights to Gatwick, then change them at the last minute and get an earlier or later flight into Heathrow, then come back by Tube as before, not by taxi. Anyone waiting at Gatwick to ambush you at the taxi-ranks will be discombobulated in the extreme."

John nodded, turning to Sherlock and pointing at the flights he intended to book, which would not be used; Sherlock was already looking up alternative real flights. He turned to Greg, "What about your duty shift?"

"On the Tidesway again, officially. Nobody's interested in me these days, especially not since I'm a poisoned chalice. I'll make sure I hop on the Bakerloo at the Embankment to come meet you outside when you get off the Tube and walk round here with you. I'll make sure Mrs H. is in the loop."

Sherlock frowned slightly, "But if the rumour mill starts up that I'm alive by lunch-time today, is there a risk that Superintendant Brat-Thug will get the wind up him and start micro-managing you in an attempt at damage limitation?"

Greg's lip curled, "Not likely; as soon as I spiked his sack-me-on-the-sly plan courtesy of Wignall's tips - good man you got there by the way - he's tied himself in knots making sure we're nowhere in the same postcode. Besides, not a fast and adaptive thinker is the Superintendent. By the time he's finished ponderously working his way through the fact that you are pulling a Mark Twain, it will be next week."

"And it doesn't matter anyway," he put in firmly. He knew everyone in the room was way ahead of him in his little master plan but he said it anyway so certain people got that yes, he could think on his feet when he needed to and what won the race - hello, tortoise.

"This is Phase one of Control the Narrative, that will be Phase Two. When we three are spotted outside No.221B Baker Street, we are going to what is technically known as lay it on with a trowel. By the time Sherlock Holmes has finished lavishing Kitty Riley with praise for her keen investigative journalism and her bravery in holding her nerve against a psychopathic whackjob for weeks on end, she will be walking into any broadsheet and naming her own terms and conditions. You will likewise heap adulation on Superindent Braithwaite's bold leadership and support of innovative and daring up-and-coming officers. By the time that's gone around the world twice, in all of about an hour, there is no way either of them or anyone else for that matter - " he didn't specify the likes of Donovan or Anderson - "is going to be able to admit the truth - that James Moriarty played them like a fiddle and they fell for Richard Brook hook, line, sinker and copy of Angling Times - without losing all the plaudits, fame and desperately needed regular salary that they got by becoming complicit with our version of events."

Mycroft raised one eyebrow slightly, summarising 'phase two' neatly, "Mutually Assured Destruction."

"And, of course, it cements the fact that, thanks to James Moriarty, you are now untouchable." Greg said coolly, something indefinable in his tone, hands in pockets and looking particularly innocuous as they all looked at him, but he gave them the level, unintimidated stare that came naturally to a proper British copper, these days sadly a dwindling breed.

"For Moriarity's discredit then destroy plan to work, Richard Brook had to be flawless, especially since the press was key to 'exposing' you as a fraud. Not a single inconsistency, not one loose thread that Kitty Riley, poor quality hack though she is, could tug on, that intensely determined people who believed your version - like a Met Detective Inspector, for one - could not winkle out and bring down his whole deception. And Moriarty pulled it off - Richard Brook was beyond Oscar winning, it was a perfect performance - so perfect that James Moriarty was buried on the local council's dime as Richard Brook in a pauper's funeral a week after you took your header off Bart's roof. What that means now is that thanks to Moriarty you two can decide to start inventing cases right now and become full-blown frauds and nobody will ever be able to bring you down. No reporter or dogged officer will ever get it past their editor or super, not after you have simultanously exposed and suborned Kitty Riley and Bill Braithwaite, even though their bosses are probably smart enough to know how true it is."

Now, as well as then? He didn't say it. But it mean something, caused a reassuring warmth deep inside, at the genuinely surprised expression on Sherlock's face - whilst Sherlock was too intelligent not to have rapidly realised what Moriarity had, unintentionally, gifted to him, it was clear that the thought of using it to his own corrupt benefit had never occurred to him. Much less reassuringly, Mycroft gave Greg a look of thoughtful contmeplation, as if slightly surprised and not in a good way, that Lestrade had worked that fact out.

Besides, the actual number of people who accurately saw through the flammel to the great steaming pile of B.S. it was in fact, were irrelevant because neither Riley nor Braithwaite could or would sabotage their own benefits for honour and integrity, as neither of them possessed those qualities. Finally, he let go of the last of his resentment that Sherlock had kept him entirely in the dark, because he was _proud_ of the reasons Sherlock couldn't have involved him in the Grand Plan.

_Continued in Chapter 5…_

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